?gedei had given him the sprig to keep safe, and the decision to leave it with Lian had been a sudden one. He had sensed she was worried that he wasn’t coming back, and on one hand, he wasn’t terribly worried about the Khagan’s hunt. The escort would more than protect the Khagan from a rampant bear should things go awry. On the other, there was Munokhoi.
Munokhoi will come after me first. He tried to believe it, but his heart quailed. What if he was wrong? Not only was he was leaving her to die, he had entrusted her with the sprig. Had he just given it to his enemy?
Someone whistled shrilly, and Gansukh caught sight of Lian finally. Her face was drawn—frightened, concerned, steadfast—and her left hand was clenched tightly around the lacquer box that held the sprig. She pointed in the direction of the galloping horses. The fear vanished from her face as she slowly traced her thumb across her throat.
Gansukh was suddenly cold in the warm late-morning sun. He locked eyes with Lian and nodded, understanding what she was telling him. He slapped his reins, encouraging his horse to join the others.
The hunt had begun. It would be finished out there, in the woods.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Uncaged
Hans crouched behind the Black Wall, sheltered by the straining afternoon shadows. He could clearly hear every detail of the battle at the gate; in the chaos of battle, Hans knew, it was all a whirling wind—a thick cloud of noise and violence that deadened the senses and mind with its intensity. It was bad enough hearing it; he didn’t need to see it too. He had had enough of watching men kill one another during the siege of Legnica.
Maks, on the other hand, could not tear his gaze away. He stood, shifting nervously from foot to foot, at the edge of the wall, peering down the alley at the gate of the Mongol compound. His hand kept tensing on the grip of his sword, a nervous reaction each time a new scream echoed on the air, as if he might tell from whose throat it sprang.
“They’ll win,” Hans said, and immediately felt foolish for speaking the words. It didn’t matter if the Shield-Brethren won or lost; he knew what Maks wanted was to be part of the battle. It was the same feeling he’d felt every time that he’d sent one of the other boys to carry a message in his stead.
Abruptly Maks looked back at him, and by the sudden calmness in his stance, Hans realized the young man was weighing a decision. “They need me,” Maks said. “And you should not be here in any case. Go back to your uncle, boy. I must fight with my brothers.” He pushed away from the wall, turning toward the alley, and then paused. He reached behind him, slid his dagger out of its sheath, and offered it to Hans. “In case you run into any trouble on the way back,” he said, and then he left, sprinting down the alley to join his companions.
Hans stared at the dagger in his hand. Long and narrow, it possessed a triangular cross section and a single edge tapering to a deadly point. More screams ripped through the air, accompanied by a renewed frenzy of metal clashing on metal, and Hans shivered, immobilized by the deadly weapon in his grip.
He should listen to Maks’s command. He should go back to his uncle and flee Hünern. But that would mean going with Ernust to L?wenberg. They promised to take me with them, he thought, his hand tightening on the handle of the dagger. If he went to L?wenberg, would the Shield-Brethren come and find him? Would they send someone for him? He shook his head. If he left with his uncle, he would never know who won. He would never know if he had been helpful. He stood paralyzed, the sounds of the combat echoing in his ears; the dagger was a heavy weight in his hands.
I will never know...
His mouth tightened into a hard line, and he turned away from the alley, heading back along the wall in the direction he had gone several hours earlier with Styg, Eilif, and Maks.
Styg had pounded stakes into the wall of the Mongol compound. Hans had no illusion that he was going to fight the Mongols, but he knew the layout of the compound better than anyone else. Could he trust Styg to remember all of the details of the map he had sketched in the dirt?
Once he was out of sight of the gate, he broke into a run. He could still be useful.
The Shield-Brethren needed him more than his uncle did.
Styg and the scarred man found Eilif inside the large tent, crouched next to the first of two large iron cages. The Shield-Brethren scout was wrestling with an iron lock, cursing the mechanism’s failure to yield to his efforts. He glanced up as the pair approached, and Styg was taken aback by his brother’s frantic expression.